Evaluation of Social Interaction

The Evaluation of Social Interaction (ESI) is used to measure a client’s quality of social
interaction. The ESI can be administered to any client, regardless of diagnosis or age, as
long as the client is at least the developmental age of 2½ years. A nearly unlimited range
of social interactions can be observed. The ESI has been standardized on an international
sample of over 6,500 people between the ages of 2 to 100+ years.

ESI Resources

The occupational therapist administers the ESI by observing a client engage in two real
social interactions with typical social partners. The occupational therapist then scores the
quality of 27 social interaction skills that the client naturally performed during the
social interactions. The occupational therapist uses our software to generate an ESI Results
Report which includes the client’s ESI measure.

The ESI measure represents the degree to which a client’s social interactions are polite,
respectful, well-timed, and mature. This measure takes into consideration the difficulty of
the social exchanges that the client performed and the unique scoring severity of the
occupational therapist administering the ESI. The occupational therapist can use a client’s
ESI measure to plan occupation-based and occupation-focused intervention, develop
occupation-focused goals, and write occupation-focused documentation. The ESI measure can
also be used as an outcome measure — providing evidence that a client’s quality of social
interaction has changed.

Benefits of Administering the ESI

Using this innovative assessment will expand your practice by providing a standardized
method to assess a client’s quality of social interaction.